The Martin Luther King You Still Don’t See on TV

As we approach the Monday holiday, we’re hearinga Pentagon lawyer suggest that Martin Luther King would support the war in Afghanistan. That makes it an ideal time torecall a 1995 column by FAIR founder Jeff Cohen and longtime associate Norman Solomon (Media Beat, 1/4/95). The full column appearsbelow, and is archived here.

The Martin Luther King You Don’t See on TV

It’s become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King’s birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about “the slain civil rights leader.”

The remarkable thing about this annual review of King’s life is that several years–his last years–are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole.

What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of racial harmony at the rally in Washington (1963); marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama (1965); and finally, lying dead on the motel balcony in Memphis (1968).

An alert viewer might notice that the chronology jumps from 1965 to 1968. Yet King didn’t take a sabbatical near the end of his life. In fact, he was speaking and organizing as diligently as ever.

Almost all of those speeches were filmed or taped. But they’re not shown today on TV.

Why?

It’s because national news media have never come to terms with what Martin Luther King, Jr., stood for during his final years.

In the early 1960s, when King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination in the South, most major media were his allies. Network TV and national publications graphically showed the police dogs and bullwhips and cattle prods used against Southern blacks who sought the right to vote or to eat at a public lunch counter.

But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation’s fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without “human rights”–including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.

Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for “radical changes in the structure of our society” to redistribute wealth and power.

“True compassion,” King declared, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

By 1967, King had also become the country’s most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967–a year to the day before he was murdered–King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, King said, the U.S. was “on the wrong side of a world revolution.” King questioned “our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America,” and asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions “of the shirtless and barefoot people” in the Third World, instead of supporting them.

In foreign policy, King also offered an economic critique, complaining about “capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries.”

You haven’t heard the “Beyond Vietnam” speech on network news retrospectives, but national media heard it loud and clear back in 1967–and loudly denounced it. Life magazine called it “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” The Washington Post patronized that “King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”

In his last months, King was organizing the most militant project of his life: the Poor People’s Campaign. He crisscrossed the country to assemble “a multiracial army of the poor” that would descend on Washington–engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be–until Congress enacted a poor people’s bill of rights. Reader’s Digest warned of an “insurrection.”

King’s economic bill of rights called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America’s cities. He saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its “hostility to the poor”–appropriating “military funds with alacrity and generosity,” but providing “poverty funds with miserliness.”

How familiar that sounds today, more than a quarter-century after King’s efforts on behalf of the poor people’s mobilization were cut short by an assassin’s bullet.

As 1995 gets underway, in this nation of immense wealth, the White House and Congress continue to accept the perpetuation of poverty. And so do most mass media. Perhaps it’s no surprise that they tell us little about the last years of Martin Luther King’s life.

Activism Director and and Co-producer of CounterSpinPeter Hart is the activism director at FAIR. He writes for FAIR's magazine Extra! and is also a co-host and producer of FAIR's syndicated radio show CounterSpin. He is the author of The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly (Seven Stories Press, 2003). Hart has been interviewed by a number of media outlets, including NBC Nightly News, Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and the Associated Press. He has also appeared on Showtime and in the movie Outfoxed. Follow Peter on Twitter at @peterfhart.

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Had Dr. King lived, I believe he might have gone into politics, found the Democrat party too centrist and blazed another trail by joining a socialist party—or at least, I can dream that he might have.
Regardless, the problems Dr. King cited are still with us but only more so.
I have no faith that Pres. Obama and the Democrat Party—now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican Party—are interested or even capable of solving the problems that beset Dr. King. Both parties serve the rich and as George W. Wallace pointed out decades ago, “there ain’t a dime’s worth of difference” between them.
After 40 years a Democrat, about a year ago I gave it up and joined the Minnesota chapter of http://www.socialistparty-usa.org, a party of democratic socialism. See if our principles are not yours already.
Of course we have a ways to go before becoming a viable political force. But if you are a Disaffected Dem or otherwise fed up with conventional politics, consider democratic socialism as an alternative for a peaceful, civil American future built on economic fairness and social justice.

Poverty and Redistribution of resources- Since the introduction of Welfare medical aid programs the poor have had a 100% tax on inheritance. How so? A lien is placed on the property owned including all estate items. The state economically cannibalizes these assets.It is thier way of forcing individuals and families who experience financial collapse to pay back the state for the medical help they have received. Nothing is left to the next generation. When you pay for these programs for the poor you are purchasing a health care insurance policy that the government sponsors. What insurance policies for Health in the open market will take everything you have? The whole idea of insurance is to prevent total losses. The middle class is about to hand over all thier long standing family assets to the states. This type of public policy is what I call ” Economic Cannabalism” AKA Capitalism

What saddens me to some degree is King’s denouncement of various state governments and the federal government in dealing with civil rights, human rights, and Vietnam. He was correct in that. But then to turn around and demand the VERY SAME government that committed these atrocities be in charge of “equalling” income distribution…whaaa?

This is why so many of you “liberals” (I know, it has become a pejorative term; ah well) confound me. You rightly point out all of the evil things government ALWAYS does (regardless of presidents, read Glenn Greenwald if you think Obama is some great guy) and then expect this VERY SAME government to administer all of these social welfare programs.

Living with this duality is impossible. Wake up. Anarchism is the answer.

We love him for his battle for civil rights and this article helps us revere him for his courage and vision. We need to re read his words every time the military finds a new threat. This week there were 2 new threats ; the first compared China’s new threat including 1 aircraft carrier to our 14 and the 2nd hot news is that North Korea can hit the west coast of the U.S. with a missle.
THESE ANNOUNCEMENTS CAME FROM THE DEFENSE DEPT WITHIN HOURS AFTER SEVERAL BUDGET CUTTERS ADMITTED THEY HAD TO INCLUDE THE DEFENSE BUDGET WITH SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE CUTTING.
A civil society cannot survive while the military complex spends trillions threatening other societies.

Socialism is an infinitely more robust system of management compared to the current poisonous ‘neo liberal’ pathology, which has failed untold billions globally. Socialism is inextricably linked to civil rights, equality, and economic prosperity. It is the ugly and the duped who smear Dr King because of his belief that things could be better.

Im a realist.If he had lived I see him in much the same light as Kennedy.Dirty tricks crew was out to get King.Word is they(FBI) had untold numbers of tapes of him bedding woman etc.Averages say it would of ended in a bad way.Kennedy probably would have lost the next election.There was even a group of people in top positions who were joining to push him out due to the madness and improprieties taking place.He was a sick man and clinically a drug addict.King Probably(probably I say)would of been found to have feet of clay.The percentages show most of our leaders do- over the course of time.They were coming for him on Tax problems etc.At that time when the powers that be are out to get you ,you had better be without sin.He was not by all accounts.Hoover the cross dressing,drag queen had him high on his dart board.He died before the claws of the machine got to him.It is still the truth of his words spoken that matter- at that time and place.To guess what his politics would be today is just that.A guess.If you read his speeches you will see he was a magnificent preacher and speaker. Polititian???He was a novice and a dreamer. Exactly what i hope our religious folk stay in regards to politics.
R bobert…….Had that feeling.So socialism is your idea of a just world?You are wrong about the linkage of socialism.Look a little past your rose colored glasses to see it for what it is.Beyond that ,it has failed in the end wherever it has been tried.

I think it\’swonderful that Dr. Martin L. King\’s life is being celebrated. I think he is one of the greatest Americans since the founding of our country. He transformed our country and society from one completely dominated with racism to one in which most people regardless of their race or culture can participate.
I met Dr. King when I was a teenager. A local supermarket chain refused to hire black teens as bag boys and I was one of the teenagers who was not allowed to work. Dr. King and his organization S.C.L.C. led a protest/picket campaign. Dr. King spoke at a local movie theater one night and I got to meet him one on one! I\’ll remember the experience and what he told me forever. I tell of this chance meeting with one of the greatest heroes in American culture, in my book, ÃƒÆ’Â¢ÃƒÂ¢”Å¡Â¬Ãƒâ€¦“Talking Penny.ÃƒÆ’Â¢ÃƒÂ¢”Å¡Â¬Ãƒâ€šÂ

Frankly I’m sick of the lie about how ‘great’ this person was. The record proves the kind of man he really was. read it sometimes. Only one person that ever lived deserves to be praised and that’s JESUS! say amen somebody. forget MLK.

even in the “i have a dream” speech dr. king talks about economic inequalities…[that part rarely gets rerun]

“One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.”

Dr. King fulfilled bible prophecy according to Jeremiah 23:25 “I have heard what the prophets said, that prophesy lies in my name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed.
[26] How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets that prophesy lies? yea, they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart;”

Near the end Dr.King said “I fear I may have integrated my people into a burning house”
The blackman and woman that are descended from the trans-atlantic slave trade are the Biblical children of Israel.-Peace

I am so glad that Dr. Martin Luther King is finally getting a memorial in our nation’s capital. It is miraculous to me that he was so instrumental in transforming our nation from one centered in bigotry and racism into one in which all voices can be heard. I remember when I was a child that my parents, in a conversation with friends, said that America would always be a racist country. They said it so matter of factly I assumed it was true. I look back today however and see how we as a nation changed almost over night into a better and fairer place. We should all be proud.
I once met Dr. King when I was a teenager. A local supermarket chain refused to hire black teens as bag boys and I was one of the teenagers who was not allowed to work. Dr. King and his organization SCLC led a protest/picket campaign. Dr. King spoke at a local theatre one night and I got to meet him one on one! I\’ll remember the experience and what he told me forever. I tell of this chance meeting with one of the greatest heroes in American culture, in my book, ÃƒÆ’Â¢ÃƒÂ¢”Å¡Â¬Ãƒâ€¦“Talking Penny.ÃƒÆ’Â¢ÃƒÂ¢”Å¡Â¬Ãƒâ€šÂ